Sunday, 19 May 2013

"Euroskeptic" Herman Van Rompuy in keynote speech: "No public support at all" for "more Europe"

Has Herman Van Rompuy gone Euroskeptic? For the first time ever, EU "president" Van Rompuy had something sensible to say about the European Union. In a "keynote Speech at the Federation of Young European Greens" he had this to say:Some are in favour of “more Europe” – at times forgetting it is a Europe for which there is no public support at all.There must have been at least two speechwriters in action for this "keynote speech", because a little later Haiku Herman repeated his usual message of "more Europe":

The fourth and final point is that we are deepening our Economic and Monetary Union with a real banking union, a fiscal union, and an economic union. Step by step, but keeping the right direction.

Van Rompuy also remained true to the usual EU Politburo line: Always blame others - never yourself - for the mess you have created. The bad things came from abroad, according to Herman: "the global credit crisis and its ramifications hit our continent.":

The financial crisis hurt Europe hard – a brutal, unprecedented shock. In many ways, our countries and the eurozone were unprepared. Collectively, we had to build a lifeboat in the middle of a storm. It took years of struggle, and I recognise that more than once, we looked into the void. But we managed to keep going, step by step, even if it was sometimes messy or slow. And eventually we've managed to make it out of that violent storm. What a hero of shakesperian or wagnerian dimensions we have in the captain of the Euro-Titanic! The opera "Herman, The Man Who Defied the Storm" is begging to be composed. However, true wagnerians will probably be disappointed, because this opera cannot be anything else than an opera buffa.